Six Paths to Infinity
by MindForgedMan
Summary: Just when they thought they were done fighting alien gods and monsters, Naruto & Sakura are stabbed in the back by Sasuke. Seemingly cast adrift to a universe unknown, they need to find their way home to stop the Uchiha, but can they ignore the plight of another world in peril? One thing would become clear: The fate of both worlds are more tightly linked than they ever expected...


"Woah woah!" came the shout of an adolescent boy's voice, echoing into expansive testing room, much to the shock of the room's occupants, most especially the one heading the experimental work, Erik Selvig.

They had been working under the direction of SHIELD to try and make heads or tails of the strange geometric wonder that Howard Stark named the Tesseract. Aptly named as the glowing blue cube was, it was around mysterious as it was marvelous to Selvig. Many nearby spoke of it as if it were truly a magical item, something Selvig scoffed at on principle. Claims of magic were just things not yet understood by science, right?

Then again, the Cube represented the possibility of overturning the laws of physics so perhaps the notion it was magic wasn't so far-fetched…

That aside, Selvig was as astonished as anyone present when the cube spontaneously activated. He knew it hadn't been their fault, not completely anyway. Despite their attempts to unlock the secrets of unlimited energy that HYDRA had achieved with it during that Second World War, the response they'd gotten was largely random emissions of high frequency gamma radiation. Totally safe.

The portal was strange, however. Despite the tear in space having a blue outline on their end, Selvig saw the opposite end have a sort of purple glow. And from the other side fell two strange… teenagers. One with seriously unkempt blonde hair and strange… birthmarks? Tattoos? Who knew with kids these days. The other was a pink-haired girl who was unconscious and bleeding out her chest.

"Itaaiii," the boy said, rubbing the posterior he'd fallen on. He shook it off, however, noticing the state his companion was in. "Sakura-chan!"

The SHIELD agents sprung into action, surrounding them and pointing their firearms at them.

"Don't move!" one shouted in a generic macho voice. Selvig hated that voice. When the boy didn't listen, as he further inspected the girl's state, another touched the muzzle of his gun to the blonde's head and said, "We said don't move!"

Selvig suspected the boy didn't understand their language, as it sounded vaguely Asian (physicist, not a language expert…). However, he evidently could tell a threat was being made. He looked back at the men surrounding him, seeming angry initially and then unimpressed with what he saw.

"Chakra janai?" he said questioningly before smirking. Selvig couldn't see what happened. One second the boy was crouched beside his injured friend and the next there was a strong gust of wind and all the men had been sent flying back into the walls of the large room, holding their stomachs as if they'd been slammed into by a stampeding animal.

The boy was suddenly on the opposite side of his downed friend, and placed his right hand onto her chest. Selvig didn't know what was going on, or what the boy hoped to accomplish. A wound that bad, hole in the chest bad, just wasn't going to be fixed with a bit of pressure. She was probably done for, honestly. Only something even stranger happened. There was a slight tremor in the area and as the boy removed his hand from the girl's chest a small white circle was present along with a series of illegible markings circling her body. And then as if by… magic, the girl's wounded chest was suddenly regenerated. Moments later, her eyes fluttered open and she seemed to struggle before focusing on the blonde boy who had taken her hand, seeming to try and soothe her.

"N-naruto?" the girl asked, sitting up with a bit of a struggle, glancing around the room briefly before looking back at the boy. "Koko wa doko?"

"Wakaranai, Sakura-chan. Sasuke-teme, eto…" he began before a flash went off in front of him.

"Finally," Selvig muttered, still hiding behind his workbench as he tried to observed the goings on without drawing the attention of whoever this boy was. "About damn time the Hawk left his perch."

Clint had used a flashbang arrow to try and disorient the boy and had followed up with a smoke bomb to keep it that way. He was clearly an Enhanced, maybe even a mutant. That speed would make him nearly impossible to beat in a fair fight. Only Clint didn't fight fair.

Only the smoke disappeared and the boy and girl were gone. Shocked, Clint looked every which way to try and find them, not used to losing a target he had his sights on.

"Hawkeye, back here!" he heard Selvig shout. Turning quickly, Clint saw the boy and his girlfriend hung over his shoulder behind him observing the Tesseract with a curious look. Clint hesitated for a moment as the boy reached to pick it up, if only because it had been confirmed that touching the cube, even with glove hands, burned one. However, this evidently wasn't happening to the kid, who was turning the pulsating cube in his hand as if it were a toy.

Clint notched a stun arrow and aimed it at the unsuspecting boy when Fury entered the room and began talking to the boy and the apparently annoyed girl. Clint wished he spoke Japanese…

* * *

Naruto's day wasn't going well. A clusterfuck of a war and a huge battle with an insane goddess to save the world. Only the moment he turns away to say goodbye to his father as he returned to the afterlife, Sasuke stabs Chidori into Sakura's chest and threw her body at Naruto. He'd caught her, but in his shock he didn't see the portal Sasuke created behind him before he was kicked into it, Sakura in tow.

Something seemed to go wrong as they fell into the portal, as Naruto felt as if they were being stretched and deformed before they suddenly popped into this strange place and got attacked by what seemed to be civilians dressed as weird soldiers. Well, if not civilians they definitely didn't have any chakra.

And now this dark skinned man was yelling at him and he couldn't understand a word of it.

"Put the Cube down," the dark skinned man with an eyepatch said to Naruto, though Naruto didn't understand it as anything but jibber-jabber. As he said that, more than a dozen more of these military guys with their strange weapons and matching combat uniforms stormed the room and pointed them at Naruto and the exhausted Sakura.

"Uhg, more of these weak guys?" Naruto complained. "We don't have time for this, we need to get back and stop Sasuke!"

"But Naruto, he threw us into a portal to a random dimension, right?" Sakura asked, barely holding back how betrayed and violated she felt after Sasuke nearly killed her with a Chidori. "It was hard enough when we had Obito to open portals, but now it's just us and neither of us know any advanced spacetime ninjutsu…"

The eyepatch man apparently didn't like being ignored, and so he said, "I can understand what you two are saying. Who are you and why are you here?"

"Congrats, buddy," Naruto said nonchalantly. "Now get outta the way or I'll make you. We don't have time to waste here."

"You don't know who you're dealing with," he said darkly. "Now hand over the Tesseract and put your hands behind your back so we can take you in for questioning."

"Tch! Fat chance of that, baldy!" Naruto said loudly, shaking his fist at the man.

Naruto felt something impact his back and emit electricity in an attempt to hurt him. Even as a kid a spark like that would've been annoying at most. At this point he didn't even feel it. Sakura wasn't the only one to have had a Chidori or two thrust into their chest… Hm, maybe he needed to find a new best friend.

A voice behind him, though incomprehensible to Naruto, shouted, "Director, he's an Enhanced! High speed, strength and durability!"

The black man frowned and eyed Naruto even more warily than before. The guy was giving Naruto some Danzo vibes… well maybe not quite that bad, but definitely not someone he'd trust on the spot. He had that look of an old spy or something, the type that always kept his real hand hidden. Was that eyepatch even needed? A ninja can wonder sometimes.

"Listen, kid -"

Annoyed that even in this dimension people still talked down to him, Naruto interrupted, "The name is Naruto, not kid, not boy and not brat. Adults are rude."

"Sorry, _Naruto_. Look maybe we got off on the wrong foot," he said, trying almost too hard to placate him. "My name is Nick Fury. You showed up in a classified location out of nowhere and interrupted a delicate experiment. If you two could, please, hand over that cube and come with us we can settle this nice and easy." As he was talking, he walked over to Naruto with his hand outstretched.

Sakura, though barely awake over his shoulder, whispered, "Naruto, what are you doing? Let's just get out of here."

"Hm, tempting Mr. Fury but bad intent was just rolling off you as you made your little pitch," Naruto said. He tossed the cool but weird cube behind him and said, "I only stopped because that square doohickey was giving off a strong aura. You can keep it, sheesh."

Clearly tired of Naruto's antics, the man pulled out a smaller version of the weird weapons these people used and pointed it at him and Sakura.

"If you're not coming in the easy way…" he began before in the blink of an eye Naruto was gone. Having gotten bored with it all, Naruto sped away faster than anyone present but Sakura could perceive. To give them more leeway in case he got lost on the way out, Naruto deftly delivered debilitating strikes to each of the soldiers along the way. Gut, jaw, sternum, chin; by the time they realized what happened they'd be waking up in the hospital.

Speeding out the room and into the wider complex, Naruto was getting frustrated. Every turn he took seemed to go nowhere fast, ending up in deserted corridor after deserted corridor. He had the strong suspicion they were deep underground.

"We're lost aren't we?" Sakura groaned.

"Yeah. You know what, new plan," he said. Activating his base chakra cloak, Naruto created an Ōdama Rasengan with a pair a of chakra arms and stretched the arm upwards through the roof, using it and the Rasengan to drill a nice hole all the way up to the surface. And man did it take a solid twenty seconds before he felt the chakra arm reach open air. They were down pretty deep.

"Please get us out quick, Naruto. Still feeling pretty woozy," Sakura complained. "Couldn't that overpowered healing jutsu put me back in top shape? "

"Hey, beggars can't be choosers, it can only do so much," he huffed. Channeling a bit of Kurama's chakra into her system to speed up her recovery, he then said, "Anyway, hold on tight!"

Naruto jumped the gun opening he'd made, appearing out the top to see that it was nighttime on the part of the planet they were on. The night sky was usually beautiful, even to a simpleton like him. But this world was weird, there were hardly any visible stars in the sky and the empty town they were in had air that was… gross to breathe. He was already feeling nostalgic for home.

"Naruto," Sakura urged, prodding him on the shoulder. "You lost focus for a second there." She had a worried expression.

"Yeah, just, you know, worried about getting back."

"We have to stop Sasuke, Naruto," she affirmed firmly, though Naruto didn't miss brief flash of sadness. "Sasuke made his choices, now we have to get home and do the same. We can't leave our world at his mercy."

Naruto nodded and tried to give his usual confident grin, but Sakura's expression made him feel it had been as bad as Sai's fake smiles.

Sighing, Sakura schooled herself and took up the persona they needed when they were on a mission. "Naruto, can your sensory abilities pick up anything out of the ordinary here? I know you said the people have no chakra but maybe there's something you can find, anyone that might have a way to get us home."

It was a longshot he knew, but Naruto dropped his chakra mode and closed his eyes to soak in the natural energy of the planet. As Sage Mode activated, Naruto said, "Let's see here. Yup, that cube thing they were bent outta shape about is something fierce, it's giving off an continuous stream of natural energy. No clue what to make of it. Should we go back and snag it?"

Her expression uncertain, Sakura said, "I'd rather not stir up trouble when we have no idea what it does or how to use it. They'd definitely follow us. Is there anything else?"

Naruto concentrated more, broadening the range of his sensing range over vast distances. He mostly picked up the spiritual energy of normal living things, no chakra in sight. But very occasionally, he hit small yet noticeable blips signalling that there were at least some people with a power that, if not chakra, was something that let them create supernatural effects. Much as with the cube, he didn't know what it was. But far away from their present location, way far to the northeast, Naruto picked up something truly strange.

"Wow, I don't know what it is but it's the closest thing to a strong chakra signature that I can pick up," Naruto said in bewilderment.

"How far?"

"Not so good at guessing distances just from sensing," Naruto admitted. "If I moved us at high speeds we could be there in a couple minutes. But if chakra or anything similar is not known here, we might want to be quieter instead of tearing up the landscape."

Sakura shook her head and said, "Never thought I'd see the day you erred on the side of caution. This is surreal."

The two took off, disappearing into the night with nothing but a puff of smoke hinting anything had been there.

* * *

"Master Rama, I hope I find you in good health," said the Ancient One, shaking her former pupil's hand.

"Of course, master," the thirty-something man replied. "The New York Sanctum remains unharmed and no noteworthy mystic events have surfaced stateside in several months, not since that Asgardian business over New Mexico last year. There are some strange rumblings of the natural variety, however."

"Yes, I've seen some of it. A flying iron man and a green giant of a man with ludicrous strength. You'd think I'd be less surprised seeing my visions come true," she mused, rubbing her scarred, shaved head. "I expected those portends to be unlikely to happen, yet here we are. Just goes to show how fascinating the world of chance can be, I suppose."

Before she and Sol Rama could converse further, the Sanctum began shaking slightly, accompanied by a loud shouting.

"Shannaro!" called out a feminine voice around the corner, where the Ancient One knew the entrance to the Sanctum to be. The tell tale sign of the door being blown off its hinges and hitting the opposite wall could be heard.

Turning the corner and preparing to defend the place from this latest surprise threat, the Ancient One came upon two odd-looking young people. If she didn't know there had been a strong barrier protecting the place she wouldn't have thought them a threat. They definitely have off some type of mystic presence, though of a kind she'd never sensed before.

After noticing them speaking Japanese to her, the Ancient One conjured a pair fan-shaped mystic shields and said, "Do not think to take me lightly. I am more than capable of defending this place." Master Rama came in behind her, doing likewise to prepare for the fight.

"Hey, we're not here to fight," the pink haired girl said with an irritated expression.

"Knocking down the front door usually suggests otherwise."

The spiky haired blonde, bearing the same look, said, "Well if you had answered our knocking after the first twenty minutes we wouldn't have broken the barrier. Jeez, I told you adults were just as rude here, even old hags like this lady."

The Ancient One blinked slowly a few times before breaking out into laughter, in spite of Rama's scandalized look.

"Goodness me, it's been an age since anyone has spoken to me so wilfully," she said happily, dispersing her magic. Growing more serious, she continued, "Well then, if you're not here to attack, could you please explain why you're damaging the Sanctum? It's important this place stays intact to keep the world safe."

The girl seemed a bit flustered at having gone over-the-top. "Sorry about the door… Anyway, we need help. My friend here said he sensed someone powerful in this building, someone who might be able to help us get back home."

"Sakura, it's her," the boy said. "She's the large power I felt. No one else compares, not even the one beside her."

Briefly, the Ancient One had felt what seemed like a brief application of some type of sorcery. The boy had drawn in a kind of dimensional energy she'd not used before, his strange eyes were proof of that.

"If I'm too help you, I would at least like to know your names first," she said.

"I'm Sakura, and this is my friend Naruto," she said quickly. "We've been stranded in this dimension and we don't have the abilities needed to go back and save our world. If you know any way to return us home, I'm begging you to help us"

She regarded the girl seriously for a moment, hoping to suss out any ill intent in her request, but it seemed genuine. Kaecilius's recent defection from their order had left a bitter taste in her mouth, and at times it caused her to feel more cynical about helping distraught strangers. But it was her duty to help those seeking her out for help, especially when it involved matters of the mystic variety.

"If you were looking for a master of interdimensional travel you've come to the right place, Sakura and Naruto," she said, giving them a slight smile. Bidding them to follow her deeper into the Sanctum, "I am the Ancient One, and this is my order dedicated to protecting the reality from dangerous magical threats. Now, let's see what we can do for the two of you."

* * *

 **(A/N):** No clue if this story will continue, that's up to all of you. Give me a **Favorite** and drop me a **Review** if I should continue this! I was reading that top Naruto x Marvel story (the Maelstrom one) and I found it really frustrating to read at times due to its inconsistencies. This is in part a kind of proof-of-concept that "Naruto in the MCU" can be done right so long as the author is consistent in their character/world lore and actually orients the plot progression towards solving the problems the MC runs into. I know I'm throwing big and probably unnecessary shade since that guy was pretty decent to me in a PM, but I'm feeling really triggered right now and I want to prove a point. And yes I know Naruto and Sasuke lost their Yin and Yang marks when sealing Kaguya in canon, I'm just not going with them losing it. Go with it.

There would be the occasional time skip since I'm not just going to let them stay in the MCU all the time because they obviously are on a time table at this moment in the Naruto timeline. Also, I'll probably buff some of the MCU guys a bit (mostly divine characters like Thor and Loki) to be a *little* closer to their comic incarnations so that things aren't a _complete_ breeze for Naruto. Anyone want to see Sakura pick up some of the mystic arts? :)))))


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